Does Radiant Barrier Damage Shingles?

This is Ed with AtticFoil.com. One of the common questions we get from customers is they want to know if they install a radiant barrier will it cause damage to their shingles or roof's? Or cause them (the shingles/roof) to age or curl prematurely. It makes sense because all that heat that would normally be going into the attic is now being reflected upward. So we decided to put it to the test. Probably the worst case scenario: we used a HOT day in Texas, West-facing slope about 4 in the afternoon, medium-dark shingles. Probably the hottest, worst-case scenario for a roof and the results from the test are really gonna surprise you. First we installed radiant barrier in part of the attic. You can see from these pictures we put about three rows of AtticFoil on one side of the attic. Then we came in and put one strip off to the side so that when we do the thermal imagining you can get a really good picture of what it looks like. We also left the end near the gable end open (uncovered) so you can see that too. So lets take a look at what the actual thermal imaging looks like. Over the radiant barrier about 173/174 degrees, without the radiant barrier about 166/167 degrees. The tests show an increase of about 6 to 7 degrees over the radiant barrier, which is exactly what the Department of Energy determined in their studies - about 2 to 10 degrees increase over radiant barrier. Now lets look at the specific areas. Over the radiant barrier it was reading about 173 degrees, over the area without the radiant barrier (the upper right - the bare roof) it was reading about 166 or 167 degrees. If you look at the area to the far left, near the gable end where we had no radiant barrier, it was also reading about 168 degrees. So this clearly shows that radiant barrier only causes the shingle temperatures to go up about 6 - 8 degrees which is in line with the 2 to 10 degrees that's normally accepted. After doing these tests we went out and measured the roof temperatures of a bunch of different roofs and, as expected, light colored shingles were as much as 20 or 30 degrees cooler than darker colored shingles. Bottom line is this: whatever your roof temperatures starting point, when you install a radiant barrier it's only gonna increase about 2 to 10 degrees, which is really considered nominal when you consider the fact that most roofs are designed to handle temperatures close to 200 degrees. So the bottom line is installing a radiant barrier will NOT have a long-term negative impact on your roofing system. For more information visit AtticFoil.com, your complete online source for radiant barrier foil.}

Channel: AtticFoil Radiant Barrier Foil Insulation

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Id: OHpyv_kxmoI

Length: 2min 51sec (171 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2011